Conviction In Assault On Girl

April 08, 1986|By Linnet Myers.

A South Side man was convicted Monday in the 1984 rape of a 17-year-old girl accosted while she walked home from a department store.

Curtis Hall, 34, of 625 E. 103d Pl., was convicted in Cook County Criminal Court of aggravated criminal sexual assault and kidnaping. He has been charged with three other rapes and three attempted rapes, all of which occurred between July and September, 1984.

Hall was convicted Monday of attacking the 17-year-old on Aug. 22, 1984, while she walked home from a department store near 90th Street and Lafayette Avenue ``on a nice warm sunny day,`` Assistant State`s Atty. Peter DeLongis told the jury.

About 2:30 p.m., the victim was grabbed from behind, forced to walk up an embankment and dragged along nearby railroad tracks, said DeLongis, who prosecuted the case with Assistant State`s Atty. Dane Cleven.

Once they got to a secluded area, he threw her to the ground and raped her, she said.

Before the attack, the girl`s family had been getting calls from someone who breathed heavily but said nothing, she said. During the abduction, she said, Hall told her that ``all those funny calls at home we were getting--that was him.``

She and her mother testified that the calls stopped after Hall was arrested about a month later.

A second 17-year-old victim testified that Hall accosted her and a friend in the same area three days earlier.